Big thanks to the 59 percent of my fellow eligible voters in Alberta who completely failed to show up at the polls last night. I would be much less pissed about the return of Tories if more than a handful of people had bothered to get off their couches and participate in the democratic process.
I will not entertain any bullshit about not knowing the candidates or what the parties stand for. It takes five minutes to look up a party’s website and get a basic understanding of the people running in a riding. Also, if you’ve been living in the province, you know if you like how it’s being run or not. If you do, vote for the incumbent. If not, vote for anyone else.
I will also not entertain bullshit about throw-away votes. Voting is not gambling. It’s deciding who you want to represent you, and since we live in a democracy, that means other people are free to disagree with your decision. And yes, since we’re dealing with more than two parties, the winner often has less than 50 percent of the vote. That doesn’t mean the system is broken. That’s just how math works. And often, the winner takes into account the spread of votes within their riding and uses that to guide their representative decisions.
The results of the election, while really not what I was hoping for, are much less irritating than the lowest voter turnout in Alberta’s history. Why do we bother with democracy when people in this province, and really, in this country, don’t seem to care one way or the other who is making the decisions? Let’s just hand it over to the politicians to decide who’s next in line (oh, wait…). Whether you realise it or not, to rail against the injustices of tyrannical societies and then fail to participate in the most basic democratic processes is an egregious form of hypocrisy. For no other reason, you should vote because you are free to do so in a blessedly fair election.
So I’m disappointed and angry. I had better hear 59 percent less complaining about what the government is doing (or failing to do) for the next four or five years.
I’ll drink to that.
I too am pissed off, but at least it wasn’t as low as the municiple turn out, which was about 24% if I recall correctly.